One of the things I like about being the moderator of an on line group is that I get to talk to many guys. Almost all of them are interesting in their own way. I learn from them. Hopefully and thankfully some of them learn from me. I enjoy chatting on line with guys from all over the world and listening to them tell me parts of their story. Often the story is not one that has worked out as well as they had hoped. Sometimes its a story of success and a new life discovered.
No matter what the story, I am always left with a heightened awareness that married bisexual and married homosexual guys are just guys. They are guys like every other guy. They have the same hopes and dreams and wishes. They invariably love their kids and most of them love their wives in their own way. They just have this extra dimension to their lives that often dirupts but sometimes brings great joy and a sense of fulfillment. Most of the guys I come into contact with are personable and outgoing. I think it comes from being in contact with someone to whom they can bare their inner most selves in relative saftey, something few of us who are married bisexuals or married homosexuals can rarely do.
The only bad part of my position is that sometimes I also run into the guy whose battle with his bisexuality or homosexuality has defeated him and not only defeated him, but left him bitter and lonely and soured on life. Often these guys are just as ready to open up as the other guys I have contact with, but in a very different way. They have had all they can take and they are more than ready to lash out and I provide a perfect object for such a lashing because I am a faceless man on the internet and I often write controversial and provoking things that provide a convenient target for those who have nothing left but ability to lash out in their disappointment and anger over their lot in life.
I'd be lying if I said being the target of these attacks didn't bother me. It does. It always causes me to second guess myself and wonder if I'm doing the right thing by providing a forum for married bisexual and married homosexual men and in many ways encouraging them to make the most of what will always be a difficult task. Would they be better off if they were just left alone to figure it out all by themselves? More than once after bearing an attack, I have vowed to close down BisexualBuddies (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BisexualBuddies/), drop the blog and just put it all behind me, yes even my own bisexuality. But it seems that every time I have such thoughts a guy comes along that really needs help, is receptive to it and appreciates it. These guys keep me motivated.
Its always a great thing when I get to meet some guy face to face. Houston being the fourth largest city in the United States, there are a lot of guys who are married and bisexual or homosexual. Sometimes I get to talk with these guys face to face. Sometimes these face to face meetings take place at Guys Night Out sponsored in Houston by the Closed Loop Relationship Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Closed-Loop/). Other times they are one on one meetings for coffee or a beer or lunch.
Recently, I met with two different guys. One was a 3 hour chat over a cup of coffee and the other a two hour lunch. I have know both guys for a few years and know something about their lives already. Both have put a lot of effort into making the best of their situations. It been difficult. One has teenagers and the other small children.
Their lives are at a crossroads, but not at the same crossroad. The older guy with the teenagers has been looking for a regular buddy for several years. He's personable, the guy next door type, and has much to offer. But for whatever reason, he has just never been able to find and establish a relationship with the right guy. After years of trying, he's made the decision to give up. He's getting some counseling to try to get beyond his desire for male/male sex and he's hoping that will help though he's very much aware that the odds are against it. The more realistic plan is to just devote his life to raising his kids and live a life without sex. To just back away from the hunt and enjoy his life for what it is. To some extent, he's been doing that anyway, the only thing that will change is that he accepts that as the reality of his life.
After years of seeing him try everything and finding nothing that works, I'm really at a loss as to what to say to him other than to reassure him that he is a good guy and wish him the best. I don't really understand why some good guys just can't find buddies and for others such relationships come easily and endure.
The other guy I had lunch with is a young professional man. I've known him for years. At first, like so many others, he presented himself as a married bisexual man; but over the years that facade began to crumble and he finally admitted to himself that he is homosexual. He has come out to his wife and she took the news relatively well. They are divorcing on his initiative because he hopes to find a life with a male partner and he hopes she will find the loving and rewarding partnership with another guy that she deserves.
He had another struggle. He had a buddy who was also married. They had been together for many years. The buddy has no desire to leave his wife. Therefore that relationship must end and he has ended it. Not because his feelings for this guy have changed but because the relationship now has no basis for continued success. As fate would have it, he has already met another young professional guy who has never been married and is homosexual. It is still much to early to know if this young man is THE guy, but there are indications he could be.
They are enjoying their new relationship and my friend feels that no matter what happens, he has made the right decision. He has freed his wife to find a relationship which can be they type of relationship she needs. He has recognized the reality of his own sexuality and he is happy for the first time. He's not taking out ads to tell the world he's gay, but he is acknowledging it to close friends and family. The weight off his shoulders has given him a new lease on life and he is looking forward to the future.
These are only two of millions and millions of guys who have their own lives and their own stories. Each story is different. The best that any of us can hope for is happiness at an acceptable price.
We all live in a world which is perceived by many as black and white. The whole tenor of our times is geared to a black and white, right or wrong, liberal or conservative world. But yet the reality is that we all live in a gray world where reality is more challenging than a simple yes or no, right or wrong approach. Reality is more nuanced than that.
None of us asked to be bisexual or homosexual. Both of my friends repeated that several times in our recent talks. It is not something any of us would choose. It came in the package that is us. It is what we are and we must deal with it each in our own way, hopefully with some good advice along the way. We cannot deal with it in a black and white manner. There are no simple yes or no solutions. There are no solutions that are fair. Their are no solutions that will not hurt.
On the other hand, there are solutions that will work and which will leave everyone envolved with a chance for happiness. There will be victims in any decision. Some knowing victims, some unknowng victims. But we as Americans have become much to caught up in the role of victims. We are all victims of one sort or the other. Just because we are victims does not mean we have to act like victims. We all still have the ability to choose our own path and find our own happiness. Blaming someone else for our fate and just complaining doesn't accomplish a thing. It only makes us and those around us more miserable. In the end we may all be victims of one sort or the other, but none of us have to be victimized. Ultimately each of us is responsible for making the most of our individual lives.
The real choice is to figure out where we are and where we can possibly be and embrace the opportunity.
Jack
Friday, January 28, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
At Work in the Fields of the Lord
Life is never simple. That's a good thing because in reality all of us thrive on conflict and adversity. It is the conflict and adversity with which we struggle in our daily lives that hones our talents and sharpens our skills to a fine and glossy point thus sharpening our ability to meet and overcome whatever it is that challenges us on any given day. The more often we confront and overcome adversity and conflict, the more adept we are at doing it. Success breeds skill and skill brings greater success.
Iron sharpens iron; steel sharpens steel, and overcoming adversity constantly enhances our ability to meet and overcome adversity. Those who are somehow shielded from conflict and adversity do not long endure. Such unfortunates become soft and vulnerable in body as well as in mind and spirit. In the end, the world simply chews them up and spits them out onto the rubbish piles at the unseemly edges of life. It is a fate that parents who strive to be their children's friends and to protect them from all adversity fail to understand and because they fail to understand they raise narcicisstic children who are unequipped to meet the challenges of life on their own.
Yet even with the chaos and the challenge that affect all our lives, there is a natural order about the world and no matter how chaotic the world may sometimes seem, in the midst of the tumult, order somehow remains. We see it in the aftermath of the "Tuscons" and the "Nine Elevens" of our lives. Those events which showcase human beings at the worst they can be provide a grand stage upon which everyday heroes, without the benefit of planning or self interests, show the world what human beings can be at their best.
I was raised in a Christian family and taught that the order about us is actually the hand of God at work in human affairs. I was taught God is the creator and the moderator of all things. God created man and gave him free willl. It is this free will that makes God a moderator rather than a dictator. God has chosen to give each of us talents and aptitudes which we can fasion into skills, compentencies, morals and intellectual ideals; but while he has given us these gifts, He only hints at how He desires we should use them. Some of us use them well for the benefit of ourselves and those around us. Some of us use them badly and in the doing, bring pain, sorrow and suffering to ourselves and those around us. Some of us use them not at all and never know the joy that comes from triumph or the resolve and sense of purpose that can come from failure. Such unfortunates don't reallly live lives. They just exist as exiles, fugitives from life by their own choice to make no choices. It is the free will of man that lets him soar to heights and accomplishments beyond what he could even have imagined. It is the free will of man that allows him to sit on his ass with his hand out for whatever someone is willing to give him while he never even tries to earn or build anything for himself. It is the free will of man that provides him the opportunity to gain his 15 minutes of fame in the world quickly and easily if he is willing to do it without caring what he is doing to the lives and hopes and dreams of innocent people who pay the price for his pathetic glory.
Because of my religious upbringing and life long indoctrination concerning the religious underpinnings of human existence, I have often wondered, just what are the philosophical underpinnings of those people who are not believers; those who see this life as all there is in an otherwise eternal and infinite void? If God is not the creator and moderator of all, what is?
Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to a friend who is an educated and thoughtful atheist. It was a wonderful discussion of life and philosophy. It really didn't, however, come as too much of a surprise to me that there were more things on which we philosophically agreed than there were things about which we philosophically disagreed.
I entered the discussion with him resolved to be intellecutally honest and straight forward in both my questions to him and in my answers to his questions. Because he knows me and already knows something about the way I think, he knew it was not my purpose to malign him in any way or trap him in some philosophical snare, and I think he felt much as I did that he could be frank and intellectually straight forward in discussing what can be very personal and closely held views.
I confessed to him that, while I am a Christian, the church began to fail me about the time I was ten years old. It failed me in two ways. First, it insisted I accept what was clearly myth and parable in the Bible as literal truth and fact. Even at ten years of age, I simply cold not do that.
Second, the church failed me by insisting that one could not be good, one could not be noble of spirit, mind and body outside a belief in God (and Christ) and indeed without God's constant intervention into one's life. Although I was being raised in a very small Texas town, my life had its cosmopolitan infuences. My family had entertained many people in our home including once, a young woman from Japan. This young woman was not a Christian. She was not even from a Christian country, yet it was obvious to me that she was kind, caring and gentle. She loved, she felt joy and she knew pain just as my family and friends and I did. I sat and listened intently to her tell about life in a far away land, a land that only recently had been a deadly enemy of America. As a ten year old boy, I could not have known that the time would come when I would be a frequent visitor to Japan and become very familiar with its customs, mores and traditions. I had no idea at that age that my familiarity with Japan as an adult it would further convince me that the idea one cannot be a moral person outside of a belief in Christ is nothing but cultural and religioius prejudice. As a ten year old, I only knew intuitively, that the idea Christians have an exclusive grasp on morality did not ring true to me. If morality does spring from God, then God visits his influence and his blessings equally on the faithful and also on the non-believer. It's interesting, as a side note, that the Bible itself says that He does exactly that.
I also told my friend that one of the books that greatly influenced my personal philosophy was, The Christian Agnostic by Leslie Weatherhead. A liberal British theologian, Weatherhead reminds us that anyone's relationship with God can only be based on faith simply because no one can prove God exists. Therefore, those of us who have faith in God have it in spite of our agnosticism. The book makes such a compelling case for Christian angnosticism that I have come to see those who will not acknowledge their own doubts and who take rigid demanding stances on matters that can really only be based on faith, as intellectually dishonest and more zealot than Christian. One has to look no further than Kansas and the so called Baptist church, run by the Fred Phelps family, that mocks everything that is key to the Gospel of Christ with their brand of Christianity which is really nothing more that pure evil and hatred which they spew out at the memorial services for dead American soldiers and other public venues.
Once we acknowledge the primacy of faith over fact regarding our religious beliefs, the gulf between honest, atheism and thoughtful agnosticism becomes more of a puddle than a gulf. With the self acknowledgement that everything I have come to believe about God is based souly on faith, a new respect for those who have an atheistic view of the world is born because in reality, their atheism is a product of their own faith that there is no God. They simply do not have the facts to back up their belief any more than I have the facts to back up mine.
By this point, you may be asking, "What does all this have to do with the sexuality of bisexual married men?" It has a great deal to do with it because the biggest hurddle married bisexual men must overcome is guilt, guilt over what their bixsexulity means in relationship to their wives and guilt over what it means to their relationship with God.
Yet, while America is overwhelmingly a religious and spiritual country and therefore most married bisexual men are religious or spiritual men, it is not just these men who struggle with guilt. Married bisexual men who are atheists also struggle with guilt. Where does their guilt come from?
Contrary to what my childhood Sunday School teachers tried to teach me, morality and ethics are not mediated through faith alone. They are indigenous, at least, to the culture in which one is raised and indigenous to the human race as a whole. For instance, one does not have to be religious or American to see the good in many of "The Ten Commandments." Many of these rules for living are recognized and honored in cultures around the world and have been througout the ages.
It has been said, if God did not exist, man would have invented him, and perhaps we did. But whether He exists or whether we invented Him, there is no doubt there is something within the makeup of human beings that longs for love, peace and a sense of purpose that is greater than ourselves. People of faith believe this longing is the result of God's call to us which lets us know, at a basic level, that He is there. People of all eras and all cultures have responded to this call from somewhere we can not quite identify. People who do not believe in God recognize this longing, but they feel it is simply another evolutionary hallmark of man that exists because man benefits and has benefited throughout the ages from such nobel inclinations, even if he rarely perfects them. Deep within every man is a spark of good and a desire to be good. There is a desire within each of us, no matter what we believe or don't believe to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Those who no longer feel that pull are simply the ones in which it has been destroyed by circumstance.
As men of faith, we believe God made us as we are for a purpose and that our sense of self worth is enhanced when we find that purpose and act upon it. As men who are not motivated by faith in God, we never-the-less believe there is purpose for our lives and that each of us is in a very real way dependent upon others for much that gives a sense of purpose, a sense of fulfillment and a sense of well being to our lives.
If life is eternal, then contrary to what most people have ever pondered, it stretches from here and now back through all the ages into the recesses of time and into a time before time. It also stretches from the here and now forward though all the ages to come and into a time after time itself. I have no concept of time or existence before my birth, but I know that either such existence was ultimately productive or else it never existed at all. The same holds true for those who are not men of faith. Likewise, I have no real concept of what exists beyond this life. It will either be an ultimately productive thing or it will simply be nothingness. In the case of the former, I shall be happy. In the case of the latter, I shall not care.
Either way, as a man of faith or a man with no spiritual faith, this life is all we are assured of. Therefore, it behooves us to live in such a way that we find something bigger than ourselves and make the most of it. It is best for us if we leave some good mark on this world becaue we are, whether Christian, agnostic or atheist, living with no proof of any other life to come.
As a man of faith, I believe God made me as I am for a purpose. The closer I am to living out that purpose, the happier and more satisfied I am and the more I contribute to the happiness and sense of well being of others, the more I leave a mark on the world. Men who do not know faith also live with a sense of purpose if they are to find peace and fulfillment. Men who have had no faith whatsoever have left huge marks for good on this world as have men of faith. In a very real sense, we are all at work in the fields of the Lord, even those of us who do not believe. If we don't believe we see ourselves as working for the good of mankind and the good of our children and grandchildren for generations to come.
I asked my atheist friend if he found that statement to be offensive. I thought perhaps he might because in making it I am in fact imposing on him something which he, in fact, does not believe. His answer was that he didn't find it offensive at all. It was a nice thought, even if he didn't believe it. What I privately believe about my God has no effect on him. And at the same time, he and I ultimately believe in the same thing. I choose to call it working in the fields of the Lord, he calls it working for the good of mankind. Either way, the action we take in pursuit of the ideal is noble.
How, does all this relate to those of us who are married bisexual men and our actions which play out becasue of our bisexuality and its existence within our marriages? Admittedly, the transition from lofty ideals to the sweaty reality of male/male sex is difficult to say the least. There are all sorts of ideas and ideals about how we as married bisexual or married homosexual men should handle our situation. Some right wing evangelical churches think we should simply be shot through head. In their prayers, those of us who do not meet a bad end in this life will meet it in the next where we will live eternally in Hell. Other Christian groups take a more benevalent line. They can agree that God Himself created us as bisexual or homosexual men, but they believe we can only act on this gift of God in a good way by not acting upon it at all. We must bear the burden stoically. Finally, an increasing number of Christian groups simply assign this and other difficult questions of life to God and leave it to Him to deal with it. They simply treat each man as a brother and try to support him as such.
Of all the hundreds and hundreds of married bisexual and homosexual men I have talked to over the last 15 years, I don't think I have ever talked to a single one who did not try, sometimes for decades, to bear the burden of his bisexuality or homosexuality without acting on it. A few, very few, have so far been able to do that, but they do not describe themselves as being happy and having a sense of fulfillment because of this restraint.
On the other hand, I have talked to a number of men who agonized over the burden, carried it for years trying not to act on it and finally did act on it out of shear exhaustion and desperation and in the acting on it found peace and fulfillment for the first time in spite of moral and ethical questions they still cannot answer satisfactorily even to themselves.
And finally, I have met the rarest of married bisexual men who recognized their sexuality early in life, exercised it in all its purmutations, combinations and possibilities to the hilt recognizing from the beginning that it was an irresistible part of who they are and never feeling the need to feel quilt for what they saw as something which was as much a part of themselves as their eye color.
I, of course, fall into the second group. How I envy those few in the third group. How I wish I had not wasted 30 years feeling disgusted with myself and guilty for what is mine by birthright. But at the same time, I see those 30 years as valuable and without those 30 years, I would not be me, I would not be part of the many friendships I have made along the way and this blog, indeed the very life I now lead, would not exist.
Still, the unending question of whether or not we are being fair to our wives in acting on the desires that come with who and what we are remain. Ultimately, I think, like so much else in life, this question will eventually be answered by increased openess regarding our sexuality, increased education regarding human sexuality and decreased prejudice and discimination concerning bisexual and homosexual individuals. As those who are bisexual or homosexual are more and more seen simply as people and not "those" people, they will be more and more likely to come to know who and what they are at a younger age. Homosexual men will have no need to marry for cover or will not be as likely to marry in a state of denial about who and what they are. Bisexual men will more and more have the option of being up front about their sexuality with the one they intend to marry. This is not as far fetched as some might believe. Already, I personally know of wives who are choosing to stay in their marriages rather than end them when they find out their husbands are bisexual or homosexual. No marriage is perfect. All marriages must overcome adversity and challenge. As in an other part of life, the overcoming of adversity and the successful handling of challenge can make the marriage stronger, not weaker.
True enough, most women today,cannot and will not understand the reality of a husband who is bisexual. However, there is little doubt in my mind, based on personal experience and the experience of many men I have talked to, that when women do understand it in the way their husbands understand it, they begin to see it is not the threat to them that they might otherwise have thought. Most every bisexual married man loves his wife and family and has no desire whatsoever to harm his marriage or his relationship with his wife and family. He simply has a need to have an intimate relationship with another man which he cannot shake.
In many areas of our lives, we benefit at the expense of others and with the knowing or unknowing sacrifice of others. When I purchase a stock from my broker and see that stock rise in value by 20% in 12 months, I have only been able do that because someone else sold that stock to me and failed to reap the reward that would have been his had he held onto it.
When, I buy a lottery ticket and win, I win money contributed by thousands, no millions, of people who lost.
Even life itself is seemingly unfair. I was born in a three-room shack that backed up to a railroad track, but luckily that shack was in the United States of America and this country gave my parents and, through them, gave me oppotunities for a better life that those people born in a mud hut in Africa or an urban ghetto in some third world country never had. That just doesn't seem fair.
Life is always "what it is" to begin with. What we do with it, is what counts. We are not quaranteed an equal start in life. Ideally we hope to have equal opportunit, but we all know it is an ideal that is never fully realized.
I once was torn apart by my bisexuality. I once would have given anything to be rid of it. Those days are past. I now see that it is my bisexuality that has been part of the enrichment of my life along with my education, my birth in the U.S., my loving and caring parents and my marriage which has endured for more than 40 years. Which is better, a loving and giving marriage that lasts for 40 years between a straight woman and a bisexual man or a marriage between a man and a woman who are both straight that is marked by fighting, physical abuse, emotional abuse and a sense of despair that finally ends in divorce? The question is admittedly between two extremes but not as extreme as one might want to believe. Very few marriages survive these days and many that survive are far from happy.
As husbands, our goal should be much like that of a physician. Physicians take an oath to "first do no harm." In a happy marriage we must take the same oath and we must live by that oath. If a bisexual man can do it and not act on his desires, that is the best way to do no harm. If he can't, if the more he tries, the more he becomes unhappy and withdrawn and resentful of his situation and finally acts on his desires and finds peace, then the best way to do no harm is to make sure nothing changes at home for the worse. The best he can do is not put his burden on the back of his wife who cannot understand it and cannot deal with it. Think how hard it is for each of us to deal with it and we've been dealing with it most of our life. How can we expect to dump it on our wife and have her deal with it out of the blue? It is a cruel and selfish thing on the face of it in most cases to ease our own conscience at the expense of destorying the life and the marriage our wives thought they had.
I have no idea why there are bisexual, homosexuals and straight people in the world. But I do know that because there are, all our lives are enriched and enhanced. We all contribute to the common good in a unique way. Bisexuals and homosexuals have through the ages contributed much to the world that is beautiful and inspiring. They see the world just a tad differently from the way straight people see it and art, literature, architecture, music, dance and cultrue as a whole benefit. In my own case I have come to realize that it was my bisexuality and the conflict it caused within me that set me to wondering about the eternal questions of how and why we are created and what are the larger meanings of life. It was guilt over my desires that pushed me to try to find in the God I knew much too little about some ray of hope for me for a life of purpose here and now and an eternal life of acceptance and love by God to come. I found what I was looking for in liberal Christian theology. In turn I have been able to help a few other guys get over some rough spots in their own lives. Its not much in the scheme of things, but it something bigger than myself and it counts.
We are all at work in the fields of the Lord. We all work for the benefit of mankind. In the end, we will be seen as an example of what is good and nobel in mankind or we will be seen as an example of what others should avoid. Our bisexuality does not cancel out our opportunity to leave a positive mark on the world. It may give us the opportunity to make a mark bigger and better than we could have ever imagined.
Jack
Iron sharpens iron; steel sharpens steel, and overcoming adversity constantly enhances our ability to meet and overcome adversity. Those who are somehow shielded from conflict and adversity do not long endure. Such unfortunates become soft and vulnerable in body as well as in mind and spirit. In the end, the world simply chews them up and spits them out onto the rubbish piles at the unseemly edges of life. It is a fate that parents who strive to be their children's friends and to protect them from all adversity fail to understand and because they fail to understand they raise narcicisstic children who are unequipped to meet the challenges of life on their own.
Yet even with the chaos and the challenge that affect all our lives, there is a natural order about the world and no matter how chaotic the world may sometimes seem, in the midst of the tumult, order somehow remains. We see it in the aftermath of the "Tuscons" and the "Nine Elevens" of our lives. Those events which showcase human beings at the worst they can be provide a grand stage upon which everyday heroes, without the benefit of planning or self interests, show the world what human beings can be at their best.
I was raised in a Christian family and taught that the order about us is actually the hand of God at work in human affairs. I was taught God is the creator and the moderator of all things. God created man and gave him free willl. It is this free will that makes God a moderator rather than a dictator. God has chosen to give each of us talents and aptitudes which we can fasion into skills, compentencies, morals and intellectual ideals; but while he has given us these gifts, He only hints at how He desires we should use them. Some of us use them well for the benefit of ourselves and those around us. Some of us use them badly and in the doing, bring pain, sorrow and suffering to ourselves and those around us. Some of us use them not at all and never know the joy that comes from triumph or the resolve and sense of purpose that can come from failure. Such unfortunates don't reallly live lives. They just exist as exiles, fugitives from life by their own choice to make no choices. It is the free will of man that lets him soar to heights and accomplishments beyond what he could even have imagined. It is the free will of man that allows him to sit on his ass with his hand out for whatever someone is willing to give him while he never even tries to earn or build anything for himself. It is the free will of man that provides him the opportunity to gain his 15 minutes of fame in the world quickly and easily if he is willing to do it without caring what he is doing to the lives and hopes and dreams of innocent people who pay the price for his pathetic glory.
Because of my religious upbringing and life long indoctrination concerning the religious underpinnings of human existence, I have often wondered, just what are the philosophical underpinnings of those people who are not believers; those who see this life as all there is in an otherwise eternal and infinite void? If God is not the creator and moderator of all, what is?
Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to a friend who is an educated and thoughtful atheist. It was a wonderful discussion of life and philosophy. It really didn't, however, come as too much of a surprise to me that there were more things on which we philosophically agreed than there were things about which we philosophically disagreed.
I entered the discussion with him resolved to be intellecutally honest and straight forward in both my questions to him and in my answers to his questions. Because he knows me and already knows something about the way I think, he knew it was not my purpose to malign him in any way or trap him in some philosophical snare, and I think he felt much as I did that he could be frank and intellectually straight forward in discussing what can be very personal and closely held views.
I confessed to him that, while I am a Christian, the church began to fail me about the time I was ten years old. It failed me in two ways. First, it insisted I accept what was clearly myth and parable in the Bible as literal truth and fact. Even at ten years of age, I simply cold not do that.
Second, the church failed me by insisting that one could not be good, one could not be noble of spirit, mind and body outside a belief in God (and Christ) and indeed without God's constant intervention into one's life. Although I was being raised in a very small Texas town, my life had its cosmopolitan infuences. My family had entertained many people in our home including once, a young woman from Japan. This young woman was not a Christian. She was not even from a Christian country, yet it was obvious to me that she was kind, caring and gentle. She loved, she felt joy and she knew pain just as my family and friends and I did. I sat and listened intently to her tell about life in a far away land, a land that only recently had been a deadly enemy of America. As a ten year old boy, I could not have known that the time would come when I would be a frequent visitor to Japan and become very familiar with its customs, mores and traditions. I had no idea at that age that my familiarity with Japan as an adult it would further convince me that the idea one cannot be a moral person outside of a belief in Christ is nothing but cultural and religioius prejudice. As a ten year old, I only knew intuitively, that the idea Christians have an exclusive grasp on morality did not ring true to me. If morality does spring from God, then God visits his influence and his blessings equally on the faithful and also on the non-believer. It's interesting, as a side note, that the Bible itself says that He does exactly that.
I also told my friend that one of the books that greatly influenced my personal philosophy was, The Christian Agnostic by Leslie Weatherhead. A liberal British theologian, Weatherhead reminds us that anyone's relationship with God can only be based on faith simply because no one can prove God exists. Therefore, those of us who have faith in God have it in spite of our agnosticism. The book makes such a compelling case for Christian angnosticism that I have come to see those who will not acknowledge their own doubts and who take rigid demanding stances on matters that can really only be based on faith, as intellectually dishonest and more zealot than Christian. One has to look no further than Kansas and the so called Baptist church, run by the Fred Phelps family, that mocks everything that is key to the Gospel of Christ with their brand of Christianity which is really nothing more that pure evil and hatred which they spew out at the memorial services for dead American soldiers and other public venues.
Once we acknowledge the primacy of faith over fact regarding our religious beliefs, the gulf between honest, atheism and thoughtful agnosticism becomes more of a puddle than a gulf. With the self acknowledgement that everything I have come to believe about God is based souly on faith, a new respect for those who have an atheistic view of the world is born because in reality, their atheism is a product of their own faith that there is no God. They simply do not have the facts to back up their belief any more than I have the facts to back up mine.
By this point, you may be asking, "What does all this have to do with the sexuality of bisexual married men?" It has a great deal to do with it because the biggest hurddle married bisexual men must overcome is guilt, guilt over what their bixsexulity means in relationship to their wives and guilt over what it means to their relationship with God.
Yet, while America is overwhelmingly a religious and spiritual country and therefore most married bisexual men are religious or spiritual men, it is not just these men who struggle with guilt. Married bisexual men who are atheists also struggle with guilt. Where does their guilt come from?
Contrary to what my childhood Sunday School teachers tried to teach me, morality and ethics are not mediated through faith alone. They are indigenous, at least, to the culture in which one is raised and indigenous to the human race as a whole. For instance, one does not have to be religious or American to see the good in many of "The Ten Commandments." Many of these rules for living are recognized and honored in cultures around the world and have been througout the ages.
It has been said, if God did not exist, man would have invented him, and perhaps we did. But whether He exists or whether we invented Him, there is no doubt there is something within the makeup of human beings that longs for love, peace and a sense of purpose that is greater than ourselves. People of faith believe this longing is the result of God's call to us which lets us know, at a basic level, that He is there. People of all eras and all cultures have responded to this call from somewhere we can not quite identify. People who do not believe in God recognize this longing, but they feel it is simply another evolutionary hallmark of man that exists because man benefits and has benefited throughout the ages from such nobel inclinations, even if he rarely perfects them. Deep within every man is a spark of good and a desire to be good. There is a desire within each of us, no matter what we believe or don't believe to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Those who no longer feel that pull are simply the ones in which it has been destroyed by circumstance.
As men of faith, we believe God made us as we are for a purpose and that our sense of self worth is enhanced when we find that purpose and act upon it. As men who are not motivated by faith in God, we never-the-less believe there is purpose for our lives and that each of us is in a very real way dependent upon others for much that gives a sense of purpose, a sense of fulfillment and a sense of well being to our lives.
If life is eternal, then contrary to what most people have ever pondered, it stretches from here and now back through all the ages into the recesses of time and into a time before time. It also stretches from the here and now forward though all the ages to come and into a time after time itself. I have no concept of time or existence before my birth, but I know that either such existence was ultimately productive or else it never existed at all. The same holds true for those who are not men of faith. Likewise, I have no real concept of what exists beyond this life. It will either be an ultimately productive thing or it will simply be nothingness. In the case of the former, I shall be happy. In the case of the latter, I shall not care.
Either way, as a man of faith or a man with no spiritual faith, this life is all we are assured of. Therefore, it behooves us to live in such a way that we find something bigger than ourselves and make the most of it. It is best for us if we leave some good mark on this world becaue we are, whether Christian, agnostic or atheist, living with no proof of any other life to come.
As a man of faith, I believe God made me as I am for a purpose. The closer I am to living out that purpose, the happier and more satisfied I am and the more I contribute to the happiness and sense of well being of others, the more I leave a mark on the world. Men who do not know faith also live with a sense of purpose if they are to find peace and fulfillment. Men who have had no faith whatsoever have left huge marks for good on this world as have men of faith. In a very real sense, we are all at work in the fields of the Lord, even those of us who do not believe. If we don't believe we see ourselves as working for the good of mankind and the good of our children and grandchildren for generations to come.
I asked my atheist friend if he found that statement to be offensive. I thought perhaps he might because in making it I am in fact imposing on him something which he, in fact, does not believe. His answer was that he didn't find it offensive at all. It was a nice thought, even if he didn't believe it. What I privately believe about my God has no effect on him. And at the same time, he and I ultimately believe in the same thing. I choose to call it working in the fields of the Lord, he calls it working for the good of mankind. Either way, the action we take in pursuit of the ideal is noble.
How, does all this relate to those of us who are married bisexual men and our actions which play out becasue of our bisexuality and its existence within our marriages? Admittedly, the transition from lofty ideals to the sweaty reality of male/male sex is difficult to say the least. There are all sorts of ideas and ideals about how we as married bisexual or married homosexual men should handle our situation. Some right wing evangelical churches think we should simply be shot through head. In their prayers, those of us who do not meet a bad end in this life will meet it in the next where we will live eternally in Hell. Other Christian groups take a more benevalent line. They can agree that God Himself created us as bisexual or homosexual men, but they believe we can only act on this gift of God in a good way by not acting upon it at all. We must bear the burden stoically. Finally, an increasing number of Christian groups simply assign this and other difficult questions of life to God and leave it to Him to deal with it. They simply treat each man as a brother and try to support him as such.
Of all the hundreds and hundreds of married bisexual and homosexual men I have talked to over the last 15 years, I don't think I have ever talked to a single one who did not try, sometimes for decades, to bear the burden of his bisexuality or homosexuality without acting on it. A few, very few, have so far been able to do that, but they do not describe themselves as being happy and having a sense of fulfillment because of this restraint.
On the other hand, I have talked to a number of men who agonized over the burden, carried it for years trying not to act on it and finally did act on it out of shear exhaustion and desperation and in the acting on it found peace and fulfillment for the first time in spite of moral and ethical questions they still cannot answer satisfactorily even to themselves.
And finally, I have met the rarest of married bisexual men who recognized their sexuality early in life, exercised it in all its purmutations, combinations and possibilities to the hilt recognizing from the beginning that it was an irresistible part of who they are and never feeling the need to feel quilt for what they saw as something which was as much a part of themselves as their eye color.
I, of course, fall into the second group. How I envy those few in the third group. How I wish I had not wasted 30 years feeling disgusted with myself and guilty for what is mine by birthright. But at the same time, I see those 30 years as valuable and without those 30 years, I would not be me, I would not be part of the many friendships I have made along the way and this blog, indeed the very life I now lead, would not exist.
Still, the unending question of whether or not we are being fair to our wives in acting on the desires that come with who and what we are remain. Ultimately, I think, like so much else in life, this question will eventually be answered by increased openess regarding our sexuality, increased education regarding human sexuality and decreased prejudice and discimination concerning bisexual and homosexual individuals. As those who are bisexual or homosexual are more and more seen simply as people and not "those" people, they will be more and more likely to come to know who and what they are at a younger age. Homosexual men will have no need to marry for cover or will not be as likely to marry in a state of denial about who and what they are. Bisexual men will more and more have the option of being up front about their sexuality with the one they intend to marry. This is not as far fetched as some might believe. Already, I personally know of wives who are choosing to stay in their marriages rather than end them when they find out their husbands are bisexual or homosexual. No marriage is perfect. All marriages must overcome adversity and challenge. As in an other part of life, the overcoming of adversity and the successful handling of challenge can make the marriage stronger, not weaker.
True enough, most women today,cannot and will not understand the reality of a husband who is bisexual. However, there is little doubt in my mind, based on personal experience and the experience of many men I have talked to, that when women do understand it in the way their husbands understand it, they begin to see it is not the threat to them that they might otherwise have thought. Most every bisexual married man loves his wife and family and has no desire whatsoever to harm his marriage or his relationship with his wife and family. He simply has a need to have an intimate relationship with another man which he cannot shake.
In many areas of our lives, we benefit at the expense of others and with the knowing or unknowing sacrifice of others. When I purchase a stock from my broker and see that stock rise in value by 20% in 12 months, I have only been able do that because someone else sold that stock to me and failed to reap the reward that would have been his had he held onto it.
When, I buy a lottery ticket and win, I win money contributed by thousands, no millions, of people who lost.
Even life itself is seemingly unfair. I was born in a three-room shack that backed up to a railroad track, but luckily that shack was in the United States of America and this country gave my parents and, through them, gave me oppotunities for a better life that those people born in a mud hut in Africa or an urban ghetto in some third world country never had. That just doesn't seem fair.
Life is always "what it is" to begin with. What we do with it, is what counts. We are not quaranteed an equal start in life. Ideally we hope to have equal opportunit, but we all know it is an ideal that is never fully realized.
I once was torn apart by my bisexuality. I once would have given anything to be rid of it. Those days are past. I now see that it is my bisexuality that has been part of the enrichment of my life along with my education, my birth in the U.S., my loving and caring parents and my marriage which has endured for more than 40 years. Which is better, a loving and giving marriage that lasts for 40 years between a straight woman and a bisexual man or a marriage between a man and a woman who are both straight that is marked by fighting, physical abuse, emotional abuse and a sense of despair that finally ends in divorce? The question is admittedly between two extremes but not as extreme as one might want to believe. Very few marriages survive these days and many that survive are far from happy.
As husbands, our goal should be much like that of a physician. Physicians take an oath to "first do no harm." In a happy marriage we must take the same oath and we must live by that oath. If a bisexual man can do it and not act on his desires, that is the best way to do no harm. If he can't, if the more he tries, the more he becomes unhappy and withdrawn and resentful of his situation and finally acts on his desires and finds peace, then the best way to do no harm is to make sure nothing changes at home for the worse. The best he can do is not put his burden on the back of his wife who cannot understand it and cannot deal with it. Think how hard it is for each of us to deal with it and we've been dealing with it most of our life. How can we expect to dump it on our wife and have her deal with it out of the blue? It is a cruel and selfish thing on the face of it in most cases to ease our own conscience at the expense of destorying the life and the marriage our wives thought they had.
I have no idea why there are bisexual, homosexuals and straight people in the world. But I do know that because there are, all our lives are enriched and enhanced. We all contribute to the common good in a unique way. Bisexuals and homosexuals have through the ages contributed much to the world that is beautiful and inspiring. They see the world just a tad differently from the way straight people see it and art, literature, architecture, music, dance and cultrue as a whole benefit. In my own case I have come to realize that it was my bisexuality and the conflict it caused within me that set me to wondering about the eternal questions of how and why we are created and what are the larger meanings of life. It was guilt over my desires that pushed me to try to find in the God I knew much too little about some ray of hope for me for a life of purpose here and now and an eternal life of acceptance and love by God to come. I found what I was looking for in liberal Christian theology. In turn I have been able to help a few other guys get over some rough spots in their own lives. Its not much in the scheme of things, but it something bigger than myself and it counts.
We are all at work in the fields of the Lord. We all work for the benefit of mankind. In the end, we will be seen as an example of what is good and nobel in mankind or we will be seen as an example of what others should avoid. Our bisexuality does not cancel out our opportunity to leave a positive mark on the world. It may give us the opportunity to make a mark bigger and better than we could have ever imagined.
Jack
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Making Choices
It took me so many years to figure it all out. Of course I'm not sure I've got it all figured out even now at age 63; but for the most part, I feel I've been on pretty solid ground for the last 15 years or so. Before that, I could have never made such a statement, at least as far as my sexuality was concerned.
As the Moderator of a group aimed at married bisexual men, I get to chat with a number of men (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BisexualBuddies/). The group will soon begin its 7th year. When I first started the group, most of the guys were in their 50's or 60's. Seeing someone younger in the group was rare. Now, that has changed. Most of the guys are still in their 50's or 60's but seeing guys in their 20's, 30's and 40's is no longer rare.
I really like to see the younger guys joining the group, participating and exploring their sexuality. Frankly, I regret that I didn't have the opportunity to do the same thing at their age. I wasted a lot of years feeing guilty about my desires and hating myself for what I was wanting from other men. And I honestly didn't know what I was in those years. I didn't think I was straight because I had this desire for sex with guys that I could not shake. At the same time, I didn't think I was gay because I absolutely loved sex with my wife and together we were very good at it and enjoyed it greatly.
Today, with the internet available to almost every guy, a married guy who loves sex with his wife, yet also has desires for sex with other guys is quickly able to see that he is one of tens of millions of bisexual married men and not some lone monster. The question for these young guys today is not, "What am I?" Instead the question for young guys and older guys alike is, "What am I going to do about my bisexuality?"
As human beings, most of us lead very busy and complex lives. The outcome of those lives is never certain nor is it quaranteed. As a boy, given at a young age to observation of the world around me and to a predilection for thinking about what I experienced and observed, it at first seemed the world in which I lived was pretty straight forward (no pun intended). In the post World War II era in which I was born, prosperity seemed abundant and within reach of almost everyone. My own parents had moved well within the boundaries of an evergrowing middle class of Americans. In the small Texas town in which I was raised, everyone was middle class. No one was poverty stricken. Life held promise for all it seemed to me. One just had to play by the rules.
But then in the 60's the rules began to be challenged. Everything began to change. A counter culture began to take shape which challenged even the defninitions of success and opportunity. The concept of hard work in return for success was challenged by millions of hippies who insisted that one should "turn on" and "drop out." Almost overnight, life seemed to get more complicated. The old observations and reasoned assumptions seemed no longer to apply in a world torn by an unpopular war in Viet Nam and devastated by political assasinations and social unrest.
Yet, in all this turmoil, I had the advantage of a stable and upwardly mobile family which supported me without question and more importantly demanded that I learn the lessons of hard work and making good choices.
These lessons were drilled into me so unrelentingly that I came to see that in spite of the turmoil that now played out all around me, there was a world out there which would provide all that I needed and more, but it would only come through hard work and wise choices.
One of the first important life choices I made was to go to college. During that first year at college I made a second important life choice. I chose to get married. It was a good choice but probably not the best choice for one so young. However, the marriage was and is happy after all these years; but in those early years it required even more hard work than I would otherwise have been required to undertake. For the next three years I worked a full time job and took a full load of classes at the university. Life was a cycle of work and study, work and study. There was little else.
I had married assuming that with a beautiful and willing woman in my bed each night, my life long desire for male/male sex would go away. I had come to believe that male/male sex as just a substitute for heterosexual sex. Marriage would finally get the monkey off my back after all these years. The only problem was, it didn't! In spite of frequent and satisfying sex with my wife, my dreams were of sex with men, often to the point of my waking up covered with cum, the result of an involuntary wet dream.
For almost 30 years, the demands of family and career builiding left me little time to pursue the desires, and I could ignore them except in my wet dreams. I assumed I was the only married guy in the world that had these dreams. There was no one I could talk to about it to find out otherwise.
In the 1990's, home comptuers began to usher in a new age, the age of the personal computer and the internet. The internet provided anonymous chat rooms on any subject under the sun, and I soon found out I was not alone but, much to my surprise, one of millions of guys just like me.
With a family that was almost grown, a career that was well established and money to pursue leisure interests, as well as the knowlege there were other guys like me out there,I was suddenly faced with a choice I had never fully contemplated. Should I act on my desires or should I not?
In the last 15 years, I have gotten to know a fairly large number of guys on line. One of the characteristics of the internet is that two people can learn more about each other in 30 mintues than they would learn in years of face to face conversations. Of course, there is the possibility of subterfuge and outright lies when one is chatting with another guy on line and that has to be taken into consideration, but while there are always guys that one doesn't want to get to know or be involved with at all, for the most part there are just ordinary guys on line who are trying to decide about their own choices. Getting to know them can be very rewarding in many ways.
I have always been concerned about not onlly making a choice but making a safe choice. The last thing I wanted to do was bring home an STD to my wife, so I have always been very very picky about the guys I choose to interact with physically. In spite of this abundance of caution, I have always been able to find a long term buddy.
I have come to believe that for the most part, guys that cannot find a long term buddy have in reality just never really made the choice to do so. They would like to do it, but some part of them is not invested in that choice and so they sabotage their opportunities. This is not always true of course. There are exceptional guys who live in a rural area where prospects are fewer and farther between and there are other things that can interfere as well.
Making the choice to act on my desires was difficult for me. To some extent, I was considering a choice that was not playing by the rules. The implications of that were huge for me. Deciding to do it changed my life. Luckily for me, it changed it for the better. It is a decision I would not change, even if I could. I like my life. I like my buddies. I like the opportunities that have come my way to meet other guys and get to know them intimately. Let me hasten to add that I have also enjoyed the opportunities to get to know men who are gay and bisexual very well though NOT intimately as in a sexual way. I enjoy talking to and getting to know guys I will never have a sexual relationship with even though we are both bisexual men. Many of these guys have brought me new insights and new ways of thinking that have enriched my life.
There is no doubt that deciding to be sexually active with a male buddy will complicate ones life. There is no doubt that it exposes his marriage to possible dangers. There is no doubt that most wives would see it as playing against the rules. Any guy who is just mildly curious and who can walk away from it all should do so and just let it alone. Most guys though cannot do that. The desires compel them. These guys should make wise choices, personal choices, private choices and carefully and discreetly do what they need to do to fulfill their lives.
I knew it hurt to live all those years with my desires pushed down deep inside of me. I never knew how bad it hurt until it quit hurting. Finding a buddy to share an intimate part of me with enriched my live and made me feel whole for the first time in my life.
Life is indeed a seies of choices. Choices are personal things. Its hard to put the lable "right" or "wrong" on choices. Our choices defy those lables. Instead we have to make wise choices for the hand life has dealt us. I did not choose to be a bisexual man. Those cards were dealt to me. I did choose what to do about it and how to do it. The choices were difficult, complex and challenging; but together with the other difficult and complex choices of my life, they have helped me to live a life in which I am happy. In my personal case, I have been able to tell my wife about my bisexuality. I know other guys who have had and taken advantage of the same opportunity, but most guys do NOT have that option. Most guys must view their desires for male/male relationships as a strictly private and personal thing. They owe it to their wives and their families to be careful, safe and discreet.
I wish you the courage to make wise choices.
Jack Scott
As the Moderator of a group aimed at married bisexual men, I get to chat with a number of men (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BisexualBuddies/). The group will soon begin its 7th year. When I first started the group, most of the guys were in their 50's or 60's. Seeing someone younger in the group was rare. Now, that has changed. Most of the guys are still in their 50's or 60's but seeing guys in their 20's, 30's and 40's is no longer rare.
I really like to see the younger guys joining the group, participating and exploring their sexuality. Frankly, I regret that I didn't have the opportunity to do the same thing at their age. I wasted a lot of years feeing guilty about my desires and hating myself for what I was wanting from other men. And I honestly didn't know what I was in those years. I didn't think I was straight because I had this desire for sex with guys that I could not shake. At the same time, I didn't think I was gay because I absolutely loved sex with my wife and together we were very good at it and enjoyed it greatly.
Today, with the internet available to almost every guy, a married guy who loves sex with his wife, yet also has desires for sex with other guys is quickly able to see that he is one of tens of millions of bisexual married men and not some lone monster. The question for these young guys today is not, "What am I?" Instead the question for young guys and older guys alike is, "What am I going to do about my bisexuality?"
As human beings, most of us lead very busy and complex lives. The outcome of those lives is never certain nor is it quaranteed. As a boy, given at a young age to observation of the world around me and to a predilection for thinking about what I experienced and observed, it at first seemed the world in which I lived was pretty straight forward (no pun intended). In the post World War II era in which I was born, prosperity seemed abundant and within reach of almost everyone. My own parents had moved well within the boundaries of an evergrowing middle class of Americans. In the small Texas town in which I was raised, everyone was middle class. No one was poverty stricken. Life held promise for all it seemed to me. One just had to play by the rules.
But then in the 60's the rules began to be challenged. Everything began to change. A counter culture began to take shape which challenged even the defninitions of success and opportunity. The concept of hard work in return for success was challenged by millions of hippies who insisted that one should "turn on" and "drop out." Almost overnight, life seemed to get more complicated. The old observations and reasoned assumptions seemed no longer to apply in a world torn by an unpopular war in Viet Nam and devastated by political assasinations and social unrest.
Yet, in all this turmoil, I had the advantage of a stable and upwardly mobile family which supported me without question and more importantly demanded that I learn the lessons of hard work and making good choices.
These lessons were drilled into me so unrelentingly that I came to see that in spite of the turmoil that now played out all around me, there was a world out there which would provide all that I needed and more, but it would only come through hard work and wise choices.
One of the first important life choices I made was to go to college. During that first year at college I made a second important life choice. I chose to get married. It was a good choice but probably not the best choice for one so young. However, the marriage was and is happy after all these years; but in those early years it required even more hard work than I would otherwise have been required to undertake. For the next three years I worked a full time job and took a full load of classes at the university. Life was a cycle of work and study, work and study. There was little else.
I had married assuming that with a beautiful and willing woman in my bed each night, my life long desire for male/male sex would go away. I had come to believe that male/male sex as just a substitute for heterosexual sex. Marriage would finally get the monkey off my back after all these years. The only problem was, it didn't! In spite of frequent and satisfying sex with my wife, my dreams were of sex with men, often to the point of my waking up covered with cum, the result of an involuntary wet dream.
For almost 30 years, the demands of family and career builiding left me little time to pursue the desires, and I could ignore them except in my wet dreams. I assumed I was the only married guy in the world that had these dreams. There was no one I could talk to about it to find out otherwise.
In the 1990's, home comptuers began to usher in a new age, the age of the personal computer and the internet. The internet provided anonymous chat rooms on any subject under the sun, and I soon found out I was not alone but, much to my surprise, one of millions of guys just like me.
With a family that was almost grown, a career that was well established and money to pursue leisure interests, as well as the knowlege there were other guys like me out there,I was suddenly faced with a choice I had never fully contemplated. Should I act on my desires or should I not?
In the last 15 years, I have gotten to know a fairly large number of guys on line. One of the characteristics of the internet is that two people can learn more about each other in 30 mintues than they would learn in years of face to face conversations. Of course, there is the possibility of subterfuge and outright lies when one is chatting with another guy on line and that has to be taken into consideration, but while there are always guys that one doesn't want to get to know or be involved with at all, for the most part there are just ordinary guys on line who are trying to decide about their own choices. Getting to know them can be very rewarding in many ways.
I have always been concerned about not onlly making a choice but making a safe choice. The last thing I wanted to do was bring home an STD to my wife, so I have always been very very picky about the guys I choose to interact with physically. In spite of this abundance of caution, I have always been able to find a long term buddy.
I have come to believe that for the most part, guys that cannot find a long term buddy have in reality just never really made the choice to do so. They would like to do it, but some part of them is not invested in that choice and so they sabotage their opportunities. This is not always true of course. There are exceptional guys who live in a rural area where prospects are fewer and farther between and there are other things that can interfere as well.
Making the choice to act on my desires was difficult for me. To some extent, I was considering a choice that was not playing by the rules. The implications of that were huge for me. Deciding to do it changed my life. Luckily for me, it changed it for the better. It is a decision I would not change, even if I could. I like my life. I like my buddies. I like the opportunities that have come my way to meet other guys and get to know them intimately. Let me hasten to add that I have also enjoyed the opportunities to get to know men who are gay and bisexual very well though NOT intimately as in a sexual way. I enjoy talking to and getting to know guys I will never have a sexual relationship with even though we are both bisexual men. Many of these guys have brought me new insights and new ways of thinking that have enriched my life.
There is no doubt that deciding to be sexually active with a male buddy will complicate ones life. There is no doubt that it exposes his marriage to possible dangers. There is no doubt that most wives would see it as playing against the rules. Any guy who is just mildly curious and who can walk away from it all should do so and just let it alone. Most guys though cannot do that. The desires compel them. These guys should make wise choices, personal choices, private choices and carefully and discreetly do what they need to do to fulfill their lives.
I knew it hurt to live all those years with my desires pushed down deep inside of me. I never knew how bad it hurt until it quit hurting. Finding a buddy to share an intimate part of me with enriched my live and made me feel whole for the first time in my life.
Life is indeed a seies of choices. Choices are personal things. Its hard to put the lable "right" or "wrong" on choices. Our choices defy those lables. Instead we have to make wise choices for the hand life has dealt us. I did not choose to be a bisexual man. Those cards were dealt to me. I did choose what to do about it and how to do it. The choices were difficult, complex and challenging; but together with the other difficult and complex choices of my life, they have helped me to live a life in which I am happy. In my personal case, I have been able to tell my wife about my bisexuality. I know other guys who have had and taken advantage of the same opportunity, but most guys do NOT have that option. Most guys must view their desires for male/male relationships as a strictly private and personal thing. They owe it to their wives and their families to be careful, safe and discreet.
I wish you the courage to make wise choices.
Jack Scott
Saturday, January 1, 2011
What Wish Do I Wish for a Married Bisexual Guy for the New Year?
It's difficult to believe that its now 2011. So many people across the world were subjected to so much in 2010. Lives that were solid and stable are now unstable and uncertain because of the economic crisis that peaked (hopefully) in 2010. Lives that were over extended and on the edge now lie in ruin and may never recover and surely will not recover without a lot of hard work or several years yet to ushered in with other New Years wishes of their own.
For the 90% of us in the U.S. who still are employed and have been relatively unaffected by the economic downturn, 2010 was still a bitch of a year because there was so much misery around us. And of course some of us had our own personal tragedies to deal with that were not the result of the economy, but just the normal pitfalls of living.
For those of us who are married bisexual or homosexual men, another layer of complexity is added to our lives both in the good times and the bad times. For most of us, our sexuality is such a huge issue that it colors every other aspect of our lives in both good times and bad. And the complexity is heightened because most of us have to deal with the issue of our sexuality pretty much alone in the privacy of our own thoughts, feelings and emotions. We can't talk to even our best friends about it. We can't talk to our colleagues at work about it and we can't talk to our wives about it. It is a raging bull elephant in every room we enter, yet only we can see it.
What does one wish for guys that are dealing with such a complex issue for the coming year? Any wish one makes for such a guy has consequences. Any wish one makes for such a guy will necessarily touch upon the lives of others in his life if the wish is fulfilled.
Recently in a thread in my BisexualBuddies Group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BisexualBuddies/ , myself and others were accused of over intellectualizing a matter under discussion. I don't consider myself an intellectual by any stretch of the imagination. To me, intellectuals have Ivy League educations and live and work in a world where they never have to interact with the rest of us other than to allow us to provide some service to them. Intelletuals spend a great deal of time thinking about things and discussing and writing about things, but they don't really ever accomplish much that is worth while. Americans really don't like or trust intellecutuals. They see them, at some level they don't quite understand as perhaps a necessary thing, but they see them as self absorbed and even ethically dishonest. I think to be told one is over intellectualizing is meant as a put down. It certainly is not meant as a compliment.
Yet, I hasten to admit that though I do not consider myself to be an intellectual, I am no doubt guilty as charged by that accuser of over intellectualizing much of the time. The fact that I choose to write this blog is perhaps proof of my over intellectualizing though I don't see what I write as rising to the level of true intellectual thought. However, given the choice of over intellectualizing or choosing to live in the moment and never thinking at all about tomorrow and never thinking at all about anyone but myself, I'd choose over intellecualizing every time.
I interact with a heck of a lot of guys through the internet and face to face. Without fail, the guys that are truly happy, truly satisfied with their situation are guys that have spent a great deal of time thinking about their situation. The guys who refuse to think about their situation are the guys who paper over their unhappiness, their shallowness, and the empty feeling they have in their heart and soul with as much anonymous sex as they can find. And frankly, they're the guys that sew the seeds of disgust and mistrust and pain that the rest of us have to deal with in their wake.
In this country, most married bisexual guys or married homosexual guys are Christians. The United States has the highest concentration of Christians in the world. To some extent, because of the overreaching of some Christian groups, there is a backlash developing in this country which causes a number of people not to want to identify themselves as Christian. Many of these people now refer to themselves as "spiritual'. They have a personal belief in a higher power, but they are no longer associated with an organized religious group. A 2009 study found that less that 2% of the U.S. population identify as atheists though about 15% idetify themselves as non-religious. But whether a guy thinks of himself as Christian, spiritual, non-religious or atheist, he is likely to have a personal set of ethics and moral behavioral codes by which he endeavors to live. A married bisexual or a married homosexual man is likely, highly likely, to brush up against his own sense of ethics and behavioral norms and he will certainly brush up against the ethical norms of most Christian denominations.
The question then becomes what is such a guy to do in this situation. Young men often think they can change. They can become straight. Fundamental Christian groups often share that thinking and they even provide restorative therapy opportunities for men who are trying to return to the straight and narrow (pun intended).
Older guys know that nothing is going to change except that the desires are going to get stronger and stronger and more and more compelling over time. They will never go away. Men who have been to restorative therapy find out that such therapy is just snake oil. It doesn't work, though more than one guy who has undergone such therapy has told me it is in some ways a positive experience. It is one of few places one can meet with a group of men and KNOW that every man there is interested in male/male sex. There's a benefit to that, and coffee sessions after the group meetings often make the benefits obvious.
Within Christianity the actual proscription concerning homosexual behavior varies widely, even within the same denomination at times. The radicals take the position that "God hates Fags and so do we." More middle of the road denominations take the positoin that "We hate the sin but love the sinner." The more liberal denominations and some individual churches inside the middle of the road groups take the position that "we are all sinners loved and redeemed by the love of God." These groups see homosexuality itself as a non-issue. Like married bisexual and homosexual men, they try to deal with the issues that surround the bisexual or homosexual person as he tries to live his life in a society in which his sexuality is not considered to be within the mainstream. They offer not condemnation, but a true concern, support and social connection to these men.
As a Christian, I am a member of a middle of the road religious group. Within my denomination there are churches which hold themselves out to the bisexual and homosexual community as churches where they will be accepted as they are and supported as they are. Its a good fit for me because, of course, as a married bisexual man and a Christian, I have come to understand the liberal Christian position, "we are all sinners loved and redeemed by the love of God." My bisexuality does not separate me from God, but it does raise ethical issues with which I have to come to grips.
Those who are non believers are in much the same position. They do not see their sexuality so much as a moral issue but they are caught within the ethical issues that arise out of their marriage vows and their pledge to sexual and emotional fidelity with one woman. They are also faced with the imposition of socital norms into their lives just like every other guy.
Having been very much involved with the married bisexual and married homosexual community over the last 15 years, I have come to know there are a number of individuals and a number of groups that exist to serve (or exploit) these men who are very free with advice and very compelling in their arguments concerning what they have come to see as the "right" way for the situation to be handled.
For some the "right" way is to quietly, discretely and as safely as possible do what one has to do while maintaining his obligations to his wife and family. For others the only "right" way is to make one's wife aware of her situation (that she is married to a bisexual or homosexual man) and see what she chooses to do.
Statistically speaking, what most women decide to do is clear. Most marriages in which the husband admits to bisexuality or homosexuality end within two years. All too often the man looses not only his wife, but his community standing, his friends, sometimes his job and most importantly, often his children. The results of telling can be catastrophic. In a few cases the outcome of telling can actually work to one degree or the other and the marriage survives in one form or the other.
Because I have observed and been personally involved with both of these options over my entire adult lifetime, I have come to believe that the only real option for one wishing to be helpful is to lay out alternatives, help guys think through their unique situation and then let them carefully make the decision that is best for them. I have seen times where not telling and doing what you have to do has worked well. I have seen instances in which telling was tragic for everyone concerned.
My own thinking tells me my sexuality is "my problem." It has taken years for me to work through that problem and come to understand it in a way in which I can live with it in peace. Most women are simply not equipped to understand male sexuality. Female sexuality is different from male sexuality and is much more apt to be wrapped up in a package that also includes love and emotion. Women simply cannot understand that for men, sex can be wrapped up in love and emotion alright; but it can also be completely separated from love and emotion and mean nothing more than play and the foraging of a bond with a buddy. A bond that only a man can understand. A bond that is totally different from that which binds girlfriends together.
If one had to sum up the teachings of Christ in a single wish for the New Year, that wish would be, "I wish you peace."
If one had to sum up the teachings of Buddha in a single wish for the New Year, that wish would be, "I wish you harmony."
Two of the worlds great religions which between them take in the overwhelming majority of the worlds population can be summed up in those two words, peace and harmony.
Contemporary fundamental Christian churches have reacted to a fast changing world by radicalizing themselves against perceived threats and they have perverted the Gospel of Christ to support this radicalization of faith. They yell at the top of their lungs and they put their fingers in peoples faces and demand that the Bible be considered the literal word of God, yet they dismiss and rationalize the parts of it that do not fit their agenda.
The Book of Romans says very clearly that "nothing" can come between us and the love of God. Not only "nothing" on earth but also "nothing" in heaven. We now know scientifically that the heavens stretch into infinity. We cannot imagine the vastness of the universe. And the Bible tells us "nothing" in all that vastness can or will cause God to turn away from us, including our sexuality. The ramifications of that are staggering. The implications of that are awesome. They are also inconvenient for many Christians who hate bisexuals and homosexuals; and so, they rationalize the words of the gospel to use it as a weapon rather than an instrument of hope and good will.
The Buddha sought and obtained enlightenment. And he came to see everything humans do as a quest to avoid suffering. He told his followers that the way to avoid suffering was to be in harmony with the physical and metaphysical world around them. Enlightenment came from such harmony. Such harmony could bring an end to ones suffering.
Both Buddha and Christ served a God who had nothing but love and good will towards His creatures. They did not serve a wrathful old man that was taking numbers and kicking ass!
For those who are non-believers, to the extent that I have come to know a few of them, they see the world around them as all that there is. There is the here and now. There is nothing after. Thus, one does not try to be good in hope of a reward in a future life; instead one tries to be good in the here and now because being a good member of society and contributing all one can to the betterment of mankind serves the interests of oneself while at the same time serving the universal interests of mankind. We make our world a better place by making the world of others a better place.
One of the most difficult concepts to get modern parents to understand is that the interests of themselves as marriage partners must come first in their lives. Ask the average woman what she lives for and she will say without a thought, "my kids." And it shows. The divorce rate in America is what, 80%? One cannot serve the best interests of his or her children without providing a strong foundation to provide for their love and care. It is not that a single mother or a single father cannot raise a kid. They can most certainly. Millions are doing it. But a kid has the best of circumstances when he has a strong, secure, loving Mom and a strong, self assured Dad who loves him yet is willing to teach him that the world is tough and battles will have to be fought and won on his own long after Mom and Dad are dead and gone. Marriage is one of the ways to provide that foundation and it worked well for a long time. This new era parents who to be their childrens's best friends and try to protect them from the slightest adversity does not seem to be working as well. Too many kids are being raised my a single Mom or Dad or even worse by a Grandmother. Such kids, no matter what their eventual outcome in life will suffer from the lack of two parents in their life.
For the married bisexual or married homosexual man, the situation is the same. He cannot be all he needs to be for his family until he is all he needs to be for himself. He has to be safe and secure and at peace with himself before he can impart the things he needs to impart to his kids in the most effective way. There is no ONE way to achieve that. There is not "a" correct way. There are only choices. Each choice has an upside. Each choice has a downside. In the end I see it as "my" problem. It is not my wife's problem although it affects her certainly. But my job is to shield her from as much as I can, to protect her and my family. I don't do that best by telling her something she cannot understand, will not understand, and cannot change. I cannot do that by destroying everything she holds dear while destroying everything we have worked for over many years.
Instead, I have to secure my sense of myself and a sense of peace with myself by quietly, discretely and safely doing what is demanded of me by who and what I am and cannot change. Is it cheating? Most women would say, "yes." Most bisexual men who have come to understand it themselves would say, "no." Most of these men tell me, "I love my wife, I love our life, I love our home. I am simply compelled to need a bond with a man just as much as I am compelled to breath."
For married homosexual men, the situation is a little harder. Homosexuality is not a point on a range of behavior. It is a length of space upon a range of behavior. Some homosexual men can function normally for all outward intents and purposes in a marriage. Some simply cannot bear the thought of sexual intimacy with their wives and they cannot relate to or meet the emotional needs of their wives. The married homosexual men I have known personally in my life, have, for the most part, made the decision, usually a painful decision, that the best option in their own interests, the interests of their children and their wives, is divorce. Divorce, while tragic, gives the homosexual man a chance to establish a relationship in which he can function lovingly and emotionally. It also often tells a woman who has always known something was missing in her marriage and who often has thought it was her fault somehow that the fault was not one sided. Part of what was missing in her marriage was beyond both her control and her husbands control to provide. Most of the men I have personally known who exercise the option to divorce do so not only hoping for their own second chance but also hoping for the second chance of their wife with a straight man who can provide the emotional support she desires and needs. At the very least these women come to see they were not alone in responsibility for all that troubled their marriage. The wise woman in this position, does not try to punish her husband for the lost years, and she certainly does not try to use her children as a weapon against her husband. To do so only trades the tragedy she has already suffered for an even greater tragedy.
What do I wish for you as a married bisexual or married homosexual guy for 2011? I wish you introspection. I wish you thougtfullness. I wish you peace and harmony. I wish you the courage to think candidly, within your own mind at least, about your sexuality and the situation in which it uniquely places you. I wish you the courage to quit denying the reality of who and what you are. But most of all, I guess, I wish you the knowledge that you are not alone. There are millions and millions just like you. You are not a monster. You did not choose this thing. I wish you the knowldege that this painful thing you would get rid of in an instant if you could, can become a treasured thing, a positive thing, a thing you would not give up, even if you could. I wish you the resolve to find that knowledge in your own life as many many many of us have in our lives.
Jack
For the 90% of us in the U.S. who still are employed and have been relatively unaffected by the economic downturn, 2010 was still a bitch of a year because there was so much misery around us. And of course some of us had our own personal tragedies to deal with that were not the result of the economy, but just the normal pitfalls of living.
For those of us who are married bisexual or homosexual men, another layer of complexity is added to our lives both in the good times and the bad times. For most of us, our sexuality is such a huge issue that it colors every other aspect of our lives in both good times and bad. And the complexity is heightened because most of us have to deal with the issue of our sexuality pretty much alone in the privacy of our own thoughts, feelings and emotions. We can't talk to even our best friends about it. We can't talk to our colleagues at work about it and we can't talk to our wives about it. It is a raging bull elephant in every room we enter, yet only we can see it.
What does one wish for guys that are dealing with such a complex issue for the coming year? Any wish one makes for such a guy has consequences. Any wish one makes for such a guy will necessarily touch upon the lives of others in his life if the wish is fulfilled.
Recently in a thread in my BisexualBuddies Group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BisexualBuddies/ , myself and others were accused of over intellectualizing a matter under discussion. I don't consider myself an intellectual by any stretch of the imagination. To me, intellectuals have Ivy League educations and live and work in a world where they never have to interact with the rest of us other than to allow us to provide some service to them. Intelletuals spend a great deal of time thinking about things and discussing and writing about things, but they don't really ever accomplish much that is worth while. Americans really don't like or trust intellecutuals. They see them, at some level they don't quite understand as perhaps a necessary thing, but they see them as self absorbed and even ethically dishonest. I think to be told one is over intellectualizing is meant as a put down. It certainly is not meant as a compliment.
Yet, I hasten to admit that though I do not consider myself to be an intellectual, I am no doubt guilty as charged by that accuser of over intellectualizing much of the time. The fact that I choose to write this blog is perhaps proof of my over intellectualizing though I don't see what I write as rising to the level of true intellectual thought. However, given the choice of over intellectualizing or choosing to live in the moment and never thinking at all about tomorrow and never thinking at all about anyone but myself, I'd choose over intellecualizing every time.
I interact with a heck of a lot of guys through the internet and face to face. Without fail, the guys that are truly happy, truly satisfied with their situation are guys that have spent a great deal of time thinking about their situation. The guys who refuse to think about their situation are the guys who paper over their unhappiness, their shallowness, and the empty feeling they have in their heart and soul with as much anonymous sex as they can find. And frankly, they're the guys that sew the seeds of disgust and mistrust and pain that the rest of us have to deal with in their wake.
In this country, most married bisexual guys or married homosexual guys are Christians. The United States has the highest concentration of Christians in the world. To some extent, because of the overreaching of some Christian groups, there is a backlash developing in this country which causes a number of people not to want to identify themselves as Christian. Many of these people now refer to themselves as "spiritual'. They have a personal belief in a higher power, but they are no longer associated with an organized religious group. A 2009 study found that less that 2% of the U.S. population identify as atheists though about 15% idetify themselves as non-religious. But whether a guy thinks of himself as Christian, spiritual, non-religious or atheist, he is likely to have a personal set of ethics and moral behavioral codes by which he endeavors to live. A married bisexual or a married homosexual man is likely, highly likely, to brush up against his own sense of ethics and behavioral norms and he will certainly brush up against the ethical norms of most Christian denominations.
The question then becomes what is such a guy to do in this situation. Young men often think they can change. They can become straight. Fundamental Christian groups often share that thinking and they even provide restorative therapy opportunities for men who are trying to return to the straight and narrow (pun intended).
Older guys know that nothing is going to change except that the desires are going to get stronger and stronger and more and more compelling over time. They will never go away. Men who have been to restorative therapy find out that such therapy is just snake oil. It doesn't work, though more than one guy who has undergone such therapy has told me it is in some ways a positive experience. It is one of few places one can meet with a group of men and KNOW that every man there is interested in male/male sex. There's a benefit to that, and coffee sessions after the group meetings often make the benefits obvious.
Within Christianity the actual proscription concerning homosexual behavior varies widely, even within the same denomination at times. The radicals take the position that "God hates Fags and so do we." More middle of the road denominations take the positoin that "We hate the sin but love the sinner." The more liberal denominations and some individual churches inside the middle of the road groups take the position that "we are all sinners loved and redeemed by the love of God." These groups see homosexuality itself as a non-issue. Like married bisexual and homosexual men, they try to deal with the issues that surround the bisexual or homosexual person as he tries to live his life in a society in which his sexuality is not considered to be within the mainstream. They offer not condemnation, but a true concern, support and social connection to these men.
As a Christian, I am a member of a middle of the road religious group. Within my denomination there are churches which hold themselves out to the bisexual and homosexual community as churches where they will be accepted as they are and supported as they are. Its a good fit for me because, of course, as a married bisexual man and a Christian, I have come to understand the liberal Christian position, "we are all sinners loved and redeemed by the love of God." My bisexuality does not separate me from God, but it does raise ethical issues with which I have to come to grips.
Those who are non believers are in much the same position. They do not see their sexuality so much as a moral issue but they are caught within the ethical issues that arise out of their marriage vows and their pledge to sexual and emotional fidelity with one woman. They are also faced with the imposition of socital norms into their lives just like every other guy.
Having been very much involved with the married bisexual and married homosexual community over the last 15 years, I have come to know there are a number of individuals and a number of groups that exist to serve (or exploit) these men who are very free with advice and very compelling in their arguments concerning what they have come to see as the "right" way for the situation to be handled.
For some the "right" way is to quietly, discretely and as safely as possible do what one has to do while maintaining his obligations to his wife and family. For others the only "right" way is to make one's wife aware of her situation (that she is married to a bisexual or homosexual man) and see what she chooses to do.
Statistically speaking, what most women decide to do is clear. Most marriages in which the husband admits to bisexuality or homosexuality end within two years. All too often the man looses not only his wife, but his community standing, his friends, sometimes his job and most importantly, often his children. The results of telling can be catastrophic. In a few cases the outcome of telling can actually work to one degree or the other and the marriage survives in one form or the other.
Because I have observed and been personally involved with both of these options over my entire adult lifetime, I have come to believe that the only real option for one wishing to be helpful is to lay out alternatives, help guys think through their unique situation and then let them carefully make the decision that is best for them. I have seen times where not telling and doing what you have to do has worked well. I have seen instances in which telling was tragic for everyone concerned.
My own thinking tells me my sexuality is "my problem." It has taken years for me to work through that problem and come to understand it in a way in which I can live with it in peace. Most women are simply not equipped to understand male sexuality. Female sexuality is different from male sexuality and is much more apt to be wrapped up in a package that also includes love and emotion. Women simply cannot understand that for men, sex can be wrapped up in love and emotion alright; but it can also be completely separated from love and emotion and mean nothing more than play and the foraging of a bond with a buddy. A bond that only a man can understand. A bond that is totally different from that which binds girlfriends together.
If one had to sum up the teachings of Christ in a single wish for the New Year, that wish would be, "I wish you peace."
If one had to sum up the teachings of Buddha in a single wish for the New Year, that wish would be, "I wish you harmony."
Two of the worlds great religions which between them take in the overwhelming majority of the worlds population can be summed up in those two words, peace and harmony.
Contemporary fundamental Christian churches have reacted to a fast changing world by radicalizing themselves against perceived threats and they have perverted the Gospel of Christ to support this radicalization of faith. They yell at the top of their lungs and they put their fingers in peoples faces and demand that the Bible be considered the literal word of God, yet they dismiss and rationalize the parts of it that do not fit their agenda.
The Book of Romans says very clearly that "nothing" can come between us and the love of God. Not only "nothing" on earth but also "nothing" in heaven. We now know scientifically that the heavens stretch into infinity. We cannot imagine the vastness of the universe. And the Bible tells us "
The Buddha sought and obtained enlightenment. And he came to see everything humans do as a quest to avoid suffering. He told his followers that the way to avoid suffering was to be in harmony with the physical and metaphysical world around them. Enlightenment came from such harmony. Such harmony could bring an end to ones suffering.
Both Buddha and Christ served a God who had nothing but love and good will towards His creatures. They did not serve a wrathful old man that was taking numbers and kicking ass!
For those who are non-believers, to the extent that I have come to know a few of them, they see the world around them as all that there is. There is the here and now. There is nothing after. Thus, one does not try to be good in hope of a reward in a future life; instead one tries to be good in the here and now because being a good member of society and contributing all one can to the betterment of mankind serves the interests of oneself while at the same time serving the universal interests of mankind. We make our world a better place by making the world of others a better place.
One of the most difficult concepts to get modern parents to understand is that the interests of themselves as marriage partners must come first in their lives. Ask the average woman what she lives for and she will say without a thought, "my kids." And it shows. The divorce rate in America is what, 80%? One cannot serve the best interests of his or her children without providing a strong foundation to provide for their love and care. It is not that a single mother or a single father cannot raise a kid. They can most certainly. Millions are doing it. But a kid has the best of circumstances when he has a strong, secure, loving Mom and a strong, self assured Dad who loves him yet is willing to teach him that the world is tough and battles will have to be fought and won on his own long after Mom and Dad are dead and gone. Marriage is one of the ways to provide that foundation and it worked well for a long time. This new era parents who to be their childrens's best friends and try to protect them from the slightest adversity does not seem to be working as well. Too many kids are being raised my a single Mom or Dad or even worse by a Grandmother. Such kids, no matter what their eventual outcome in life will suffer from the lack of two parents in their life.
For the married bisexual or married homosexual man, the situation is the same. He cannot be all he needs to be for his family until he is all he needs to be for himself. He has to be safe and secure and at peace with himself before he can impart the things he needs to impart to his kids in the most effective way. There is no ONE way to achieve that. There is not "a" correct way. There are only choices. Each choice has an upside. Each choice has a downside. In the end I see it as "my" problem. It is not my wife's problem although it affects her certainly. But my job is to shield her from as much as I can, to protect her and my family. I don't do that best by telling her something she cannot understand, will not understand, and cannot change. I cannot do that by destroying everything she holds dear while destroying everything we have worked for over many years.
Instead, I have to secure my sense of myself and a sense of peace with myself by quietly, discretely and safely doing what is demanded of me by who and what I am and cannot change. Is it cheating? Most women would say, "yes." Most bisexual men who have come to understand it themselves would say, "no." Most of these men tell me, "I love my wife, I love our life, I love our home. I am simply compelled to need a bond with a man just as much as I am compelled to breath."
For married homosexual men, the situation is a little harder. Homosexuality is not a point on a range of behavior. It is a length of space upon a range of behavior. Some homosexual men can function normally for all outward intents and purposes in a marriage. Some simply cannot bear the thought of sexual intimacy with their wives and they cannot relate to or meet the emotional needs of their wives. The married homosexual men I have known personally in my life, have, for the most part, made the decision, usually a painful decision, that the best option in their own interests, the interests of their children and their wives, is divorce. Divorce, while tragic, gives the homosexual man a chance to establish a relationship in which he can function lovingly and emotionally. It also often tells a woman who has always known something was missing in her marriage and who often has thought it was her fault somehow that the fault was not one sided. Part of what was missing in her marriage was beyond both her control and her husbands control to provide. Most of the men I have personally known who exercise the option to divorce do so not only hoping for their own second chance but also hoping for the second chance of their wife with a straight man who can provide the emotional support she desires and needs. At the very least these women come to see they were not alone in responsibility for all that troubled their marriage. The wise woman in this position, does not try to punish her husband for the lost years, and she certainly does not try to use her children as a weapon against her husband. To do so only trades the tragedy she has already suffered for an even greater tragedy.
What do I wish for you as a married bisexual or married homosexual guy for 2011? I wish you introspection. I wish you thougtfullness. I wish you peace and harmony. I wish you the courage to think candidly, within your own mind at least, about your sexuality and the situation in which it uniquely places you. I wish you the courage to quit denying the reality of who and what you are. But most of all, I guess, I wish you the knowledge that you are not alone. There are millions and millions just like you. You are not a monster. You did not choose this thing. I wish you the knowldege that this painful thing you would get rid of in an instant if you could, can become a treasured thing, a positive thing, a thing you would not give up, even if you could. I wish you the resolve to find that knowledge in your own life as many many many of us have in our lives.
Jack
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)